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Militia Upkeep Costs
HAM allows setting a daily fee per militia. Different types of militia cost different amounts of money, with better troops being more expensive of course. The general idea is to make it harder for the player to "dig in" for extended periods of time using masses of militia to hold the queen back, a strategy that was previously just too effective. History Believe it or not, but this feature actually dates back to Jagged Alliance 1. In Metavira, each day you could decide how many militia to hire and where to place them. However, securing your entire land, or even just your borders, could put you out of business in a hurry. Careful consideration was required, and as a result your territory was never safe enough. This meant that each day you had to push forwards, to prevent the enemy from pushing you back! It put a certain pressure on you to complete the game, rather than just sit back and earn money. In contrast, in Jagged Alliance 2 you do not pay a Daily Maintenance cost for Militia. Instead, you pay once when training them, and they'll stick around for as long as they stay alive. This presents a problem. If you control several mines, and recruit a large amount of Militia to protect them, it's possible to make enough money to cover any Militia re-training costs after enemy attacks. The result is that you make much more money than you can spend, eliminating your monetary concerns for the rest of the game. You can spend months of game-time training your men to superior skill, and end up hiring ALL the best mercs on the A.I.M roster. To counter this issue, JA2 programmers added an event where Enrico berates you for not taking to the offensive, causing a loyalty drop all across the country. However, v1.13 disabled the loyalty hit, resulting in what's called the "Mid-Game Slump" - the ability to stop fighting without any serious reprecussions. This was made even more profound with the advent of Mobile Militia in JA2 1.13. While mobiles may cost a lot of money to train, they are massively powerful in large groups, and can prevent enemies from reaching your cities at all. They can even can reinforce one another, becoming a permanent and unbreakable defensive force. This invariably leads to large sums of money accumulating in your account. HAM 3.6 - Security vs. Liquidity HAM 3.6 introduces a constant, daily upkeep cost for militia. Each and every militia member is paid a fixed amount of money each day, based on his class (Rookie/Regular/Elite) and unit (Garrison/Mobile). Here are the HAM Default costs PER MAN: How do I pay? The money will automatically be deducted from your account every midnight. You only have to pay for militia that have been under your employ for the entire past 24 hours. Militia who've died today, or ones who were recruited today, are not included in the total debt. If you fail to pay (I.E. you owe more than your have in your account), some militia will simply disband automatically and return to their homes. Please note that the game prefers to minimize expenses, so in the event of debt the game will automatically try to disband ELITES first, as they cost the most money, and only then REGULARS and then GREENS. Also, mobile militia are more likely to disband than town garrisons. This will reduce costs more effectively so that you don't end up losing your entire militia force over a couple of nights... How does this affect my strategy? HAM's first ever feature was to allow players to adjust mine income, in an attempt to allow players more freedom to change the difficulty of the strategic game. This joins up with many other financial adjustments that already existed in JA2 1.13. Setting an upkeep on militia is just another way to tweak the game, but it is one where finances and survival are closely entwined. Playing the game with few or no militia is very difficult, as you have to keep shifting your forces around to defend soft spots and retrain militia to defend your towns, or simply plow through from city to city in your way to Meduna faster than the queen can retake any of your territory. To be able to afford better protection, you will need to capture more mines, or hire less mercs, which in either case would be a problem. Therefore, it should now be impossible to keep up an invulnerable defense by training lots of mobiles, as these will eventually bankrupt you or at least make financial survival a whole lot more difficult. In fact, even supporting a full contingent of elite town militia would be problematic. The end result is that the more you extend your borders, the more vulnerable you are. This is the inverse of what we had in normal JA2 1.13 where getting more militia was just a function of how much time you were willing to spend on training them, so expanding to a new town only put you in danger until you could start churning out more militia there. HAM 3.6 - Disband Militia The advent of militia upkeep means that we also need some way to get rid of militia to avoid having to pay large sums if we can't afford them. Of course, one way is to just wait for an enemy attack, and simply not retrain the militia afterwards. But this is extremely unreliable. HAM's method is to allow you, the player, the disband militia in cities whenever you want. To do this, open the militia rearrangement box by right-clicking a city sector while Militia View mode is on. Then pick up as many militia as you would like to disband, and click the "Disband" button. You will be asked to confirm your decision. If you agree, the militia you've picked up will disappear. You are not reimbursed for the money it took to train them! Also note that disbanding militia can cause a small drop in local loyalty, especially if you disband a large number of them. This allows you to keep militia numbers down if necessary. Please note that this can only be done in cities, which means that normally mobile militia and SAM Site garrisons cannot be disbanded. However, if you allow Automatic Mobile Militia Reinforcements, then your mobiles can move back into the city to fill the void you've created, and then you can disband them as well. Also note that mobiles cost more than town militia, so the very act of them moving back into the city will lower your daily upkeep. Unfortunately, there is no way (currently!) to disband militia in SAM sites. INI Settings There are 6 separate INI settings for controlling the daily costs of different types of militia. DAILY_MILITIA_UPKEEP_TOWN_GREEN DAILY_MILITIA_UPKEEP_TOWN_REGULAR DAILY_MILITIA_UPKEEP_TOWN_ELITE DAILY_MILITIA_UPKEEP_MOBILE_GREEN DAILY_MILITIA_UPKEEP_MOBILE_REGULAR DAILY_MILITIA_UPKEEP_MOBILE_ELITE See Also Daily Expenses Window Category:HAM Militia